Scott Santens says that “If You Think Basic Income is ‘Free Money’ or Socialism, Think Again.” The article is in a way refreshing because Santens likes markets, writes Sheldon Richman. But while Santens is promarket and well-motivated, his proposal for UBI fails to survive libertarian scrutiny.
“First, saying basic income is socialism is as absurd as saying money is socialism,” writes Santens. “It’s money. It’s all it is. What do people do with money? They use it in markets. In other words, basic income is fuel for markets.”
But a basic-income policy—or universal basic income (UBI)—is not money, argues Richman. How can a policy be money? It’s a proposal for what to do with money (or purchasing power). As for whether the policy constitutes socialism, that’s a semantical matter, writes Richman. If socialism means state ownership of the means of production, then UBI is not surely socialism. If we use an older definition—an umbrella term for any answer to the “social question” regarding the fact that most people must sell their labor services to owners of capital in order to live—then as Santens presents it, UBI is a form of socialism.
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